Hand-held radios have been in use for many years to provide communications between small groups of two or more individuals working on a common task. Examples of this are evident in everyday events such as police and fire operations, search and rescue, etc. The Air Force and Army likewise conduct similar activities. Some of these involve flightline operations and comprise hardwired connections between users. However, the communications are functionally the same. A common element of all the above is that any given user is listening to only a single radio (or hardwired) channel at any given time. Furthermore, there may be a number of user-selectable channels over which any two or more users may choose to communicate at a given time. This is generally necessary where there are more than two groups to allow sufficient opportunity for all of the necessary communications between the various groups' members to take place. A major deficiency with this configuration, however, is that it does not allow members of one group to be addressed by members of another group at the same time, either individually or collectively. For example, in an emergency situation it may be necessary for all of the members of a group to be alerted via some type of warning. In many instances this could be a situation in which the failure of an immediate response by one or more of the group members could lead to disaster. It would be desirable to enable any of the members of a given group (or external information source) to communicate via a broadcast to all of the other group members simultaneously and independent of any other communications in which they are engaged. It would likewise be desirable to enable simultaneous monitoring of multiple channels by any member of the group.